Month: October 2018

This is the last day for the October poetry challenge, #Octpowrimo and I am glad I participated. I plan to continue writing poetry within my other posts. Thank you to all of you who have encouraged me.

I wrote the following poem to kick off my holiday sugar free challenge.

Anyone want to join me? Leave a comment below… I will probably blog about it in conjunction with my regular posts about dementia, homeschooling a highschooler, art and poetry.

This post is three poems in one, a pre, a Behrquain, and a post poem. Enjoy!

I wrote this pre-poem as an introduction to the following Behrquain poem. And, I’m not entirely sure if there exists such a thing as pre-poems, but I first wrote in paragraph form and it was just trying to pop out a poem so I just said “let it pre”.

I’ve enjoyed finding out that I am a poet during this #Octpowrimo month. I remember how at the beginning I felt excited and then halfway through it was, “What have I gotten myself into!”

Second, Find a spark

The spark is usually something that oddly occurs to me like the memory of riding the commuter train into Philly. I have never been a writer who just sits and writes all kind of thoughts free flow. No, I like to mull over my thoughts while I am driving or cleaning… or, today, cleaning out the garage. My poem below was sparked during my great garage clean out. The job is mostly completed and good thing: I am actually able to pull my car in.

Third, Write it down

I begin typing it out and it usually flows. But then I change it to make it make sense more artistically and fix words. I look to see if there is an interesting flow or did I lose the concept somewhere along the way. Also important to me is rhythm and rhyme although I don’t really try to obey any rhyming rules. I think that the poetry writing is somewhat like painting. There is a concept and a flow the eyes follow, a point, a main idea and supporting cast.

And then, I use the WordPress save draft or publish feature. I like to publish it to post on a certain day and time. For the poems it is around 5:30 am. Then I put it away until later in the day or in the middle of the night.

Last, I reread later and once in a great while I give up on it and rewrite completely. If I can’t sleep sometimes I will open up my poem on my iPhone in bed and am glad I do because I catch blatant looking errors that I wonder how I could possibly have missed.

The poem below is the twenty year old me living on the high speed line and working in center city Philadelphia. For a little while I was taking courses at an eye institute in the north of the city and working in the center city while residing on the main train line in Pennsylvania several stops out. So, to get to work, school, and home took me a very long time. I walked to the train station near my apartment, took the commuter train to a bus and a subway to work, to class, to work, and back home again. It was an interesting commute and I had a lot of strange experiences like breaking my nose in a train wreck or like the time I was flashed (those are for a whole different posts). Mostly I remember watching people and wondering about where they were going. There was a mental hospital that had closed down, I think, and they were sleeping in cardboard boxes, some screaming strange scary stuff, sitting atop the steamy grates. I can still conjure the sour smell mixed with the smell of pretzels baking in places. The smell memory is a core brain area! But, one of the strongest memories was feeling cold.

This is my first attempt at a Behrquain poem, it is not to rhyme, it has a 2, 4, 6, 8, 6, 4, 2… style. I hope I got it right. Not rhyming was difficult for me!

Oh! The creative push to write a daily poem for Octpowrimo month has helped me write descriptive scenes in my fiction writing giving it better rhythm but not rhyme goodness me but that is a current problem! Anyone else?

Between fiction writing and oil painting and cleaning out my garage, I find myself “painting” poetic scenes in my mind.

And like a painting I have here still on my easel even before I add additional brushstrokes, I have done them in my mind first, same with the written work that needs additional keystrokes.

So, if that wasn’t enough stroking for one post… here is my poem for day 25: Strokes

Exquisitely Yours is the name of a hair styling salon in my town. I wonder, in light of the fashion of our time being at a loss for exquisiteness, how a person would pick that name for their salon. I wondered how they would think of hair as exquisite since in this day hairstyle for a woman that is too coiffed is considered out of fashion. Perhaps they are attempting to bring back exquisite. More power to them! Bravo!

But, most likely perhaps they are advertising that they provide exquisite service. That should never go out of style and I would not be surprised if a business in my town, a Texas town that may look a little rough around the edges offers, of course, exquisite service with a dash of southern hospitality.

I love words like a sports fanatic. In thinking about the word, exquisite, I was attempting to conjure up exquisite things and I was wondering if truly we may have lost touch with the concept of exquisite: We live in our cookie cutter homes, purchase modern art, wear unmatched clothing and decorate in farmhouse style, wear relaxed blue jeans and our idea of dressing up is wearing a darker color jean with a pretty top and extra makeup; and to top all that off, easy manageable hair.

And that brings me back to that “exquisite” hair salon. Hair has its fashions and our time is not a fashion of exquisite hair. (My poem, below, is where I had a bit of fun with the fashion of hair.)

Has it been in these past seventy or so years, since blue jeans came into vogue, that most everything has had its exquisiteness washed out in the tide of style involving every kind of fashion. The opposite of exquisite is preferred today.

Of course, being a word sleuth, I looked it up.

Exquisite – of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence, as a face, a flower, coloring, music, or poetry. From Dictionary.com

I was surprised that “coloring” was part of the definition of exquisite. So, I put exquisite coloring as a search term in google and only found exquisite adult coloring books which was surprising since the dictionary evidently believed that there was something exquisite about coloring. What could they have meant by including it? The color of skin, or of fabric or of paint on a canvas?

There is exquisite detail in Michelangelo’s paintings and in architecture belonging especially to the high renaissance and Victorian times and in clothing as it used to be made with fancy buttons and finely woven materials, and velvets, brocade, and top stitching.

If you have a great grandma, go to their house and look around. She probably has some furniture that were exquisitely crafted but you would have to check out an old Sears Roebuck catalog to find an exquisite appliance because they possibly aren’t able to run on today’s electrical current. But, cars. There are car shows in my little town around the courthouse where people gawk at the exquisiteness inside and out of old automobiles.

I know where exquisiteness went: the way of cheap manufacturing. How’d they make us buy into it? Well, I think it was an advertising campaign based on streamlined everything. The new modern look.

Perhaps the short list which is left for exquisite is a person with an exquisite nose or fine jewelry and, especially, flowers – heaven made and never ever going out of exquisite style.

After today, October 23, I have just 7 poems left to write in the #Octpowrimo poetry challenge which spans the month of October. This challenge has required of my brain and heart and soul a rendering of my life transcribed into daily poetry. There are moments I have captured a poem idea but I’m in the middle of something… homeschooling or cooking, caregiving, or doing the list of chores my right brain requires. Those people who love me know I have a left brain that tries to drive both sides.

Anyhow thank you, you poets who came up with this artistic month long stretch and making us all work our creative muscle and lift some heavy word weight!

Good they didn’t cut it down. My dad tells the story again and again of the property his parents owned. If I’m ever out riding with him I let him repeat the story of the tree. I’m glad for #Octpowrimo because I look around each day for a poem. Today we went out to bring home cheeseburgers and drove around that cloverleaf and I just knew I wanted to encapsulate the feeling.

I’ve been working on writing my fiction book instead of painting. I’m 7 chapters in, engrossed in my own story. I think all the creating poetry has done something interesting for my writing. Only problem is I keep trying to rhyme. But today I decided to finish one of my river paintings. I’m working to finish, sign, frame and show my paintings.

I wrote this poem in response to another blogger’s story of being stiffed by an online love when she had her “You’ve Got Mail” un-encounter that scene where the fellow Shop Around the Corner workers say “He Stood You Up?” I have my own story where I met a man online – how much of it did that movie cause??? He didn’t stand me up but he was very strange and I was glad it was only a coffee date. I was able to sip it fast and zip out with no harm done.

Sometimes I like to imagine that something I have created on canvas is real. I have painted many ocean and beach scenes but this is my first attempt at a sailing vessel. I have the painting sitting on the floor trying to figure out a grouping with some other paintings. It’s actually an acrylic painting though it worked better in the poem to have it be an oil. And I have no fireplace, but I am considering building myself a faux fireplace with candles just so that I can hang it above the mantel.

My good friend Caroline Dechert so sweetly framed it in that beautiful frame and put it in a local art show for me during a time when it was difficult to get out and do things due to caregiving.

That frame is as fancy as friendship. Caroline called me and checked up on me and came to my house to paint with me. She has been one of my biggest art supporters. Friendship is golden.

My iPad keyboard reveals which keys I use the most. Smudgy traces of my fingers linger on the

asdfhjkletiocnm

and delete.

However the

qwrypzxvb

keys are still new looking. Yes, after I noticed the smudginess I gently scrubbed it with a soft sudsy cloth but not before I made a sorta scientific study which consisted of jotting down the smudge/nonsmudge keys and then considering what words I must be leaving out.

At first I thought I might make up words of those underused letters but then I noticed there was no vowel. Then I conjured all those weird words my English teachers used to get so fascinated about clutching their heart enraptured over some old writing that I couldn’t get adolescently stirred up for.

Anyhow that thought trail led me to write this poem for day 13 of this oh so exhilarating challenge.

I returned today to paint with my Thursday art friends after a very long break. Like many things I’m easing back into life, breathing a little and feeling free. I brought a canvas prepped with a green ground and I painted… clouds

I put my husband in memory care last week and I left there feeling a little sad for him because of who I know he used to be. I saw a spark of his old personality and that made me consider the past 6 years I have been taking care of him in relation also to how long I’ve been raising children and it all made me feel grateful for the chance to take care of and love the people I have in my life.

I refinished an old desk bought at a local antique store and now have it in my living room. I had to use the furniture stripper twice on the top because I could still see the water rings then stained it to match the original color and put a brilliant polyurethane gloss on the top.

As I worked hard in the garage in the Texas heat in August refinishing this desk I was wondering its story. If desks could talk…

Wow it’s a week into the month. Each day That I write a new poem for this October poetry challenge, Octpowrimo, I find it a struggle at the beginning to get the poem started but then the flow goes. Getting the initial spark is not difficult because there is poetry everywhere when you begin to look for it.

I wrote this poem on 10/4/2018… and it is true that I did give up all sweets 12 years ago on 10/4/2006. I remember the date because it was 10/4 in CB radio language…“over and out” on sweets because I had been eating sweets like a crazy person. It is also true I didn’t eat sweets for 2 years and that I’m now back to sweets/crazy status. So 10/4/2018 I gave up eating sweets for as long as I can.

Don’t mock the cardinals

I stood outside while my 10 year old Yorkie was doing her little business. I say little cause she’s only 9 pounds. She has had a little problem which has given her the nickname “The Princess of Pee” because she doesn’t want to “go” outside when it’s raining and it’s been raining a lot.

Enough is enough. So I figured I’d better stand outside with her to be sure.

And boy did the birds put on a show.

High on top my neighbors tree were three female cardinals. And in my tree, a beautiful male sang loud a courting song which is what got my attention. But then some mockingbirds, the Texas state bird, swooped in and took those high positions.

There are rules in birddom, I’m sure, rules dictating who gets the top of the tree. Sure seems the mockingbird ranks over the female cardinal.

Coming in from the animal show in my backyard, I can’t help but consider in this so far quiet early morning hour as I scoop coffee grounds and put the oatmeal in the microwave… I can’t help but compare our lives to the birds: When my husband got his dementia I had to swoop in and take his place kinda like the mockingbird.

And I wanted to … And I had to…

when I needed to … be at the top where I am the one in charge where I am caregiver to my husband and part encourager part enforcer to our daughter who homeschools.

Gotta be the mockingbird.

I really ought to write a mockingbird poem during this poetry writing month. Right?!

I just love this month long poetry writing challenge. I’m stuck on colors right now… I think I may do brown tomorrow.

The poetry writing has come at a good time for me. I’ve been sick with a bad cold and it’s got my poetry lights turned on. And it’s giving me something to think of as I go about my usual day of caregiving.

For awhile I was churning out little clay animals, mostly owls, but I decided to make a turtle here and I snapped it’s picture as he looked like he was trying to climb out.

Feeling Stuck

I got a bead stuck up my nose… in all honesty, I stuck a bead up my nose when I was about eight years old and had to go to the doctor to get it out. When you get anything stuck anywhere there is a franticness that sets in. The bead gets dug even deeper, the kid with the elbow between the chair slats wedges even tighter (one of my kids).

When my grandson came to visit a few years ago he got his finger stuck in my pantry door. Anything stuck makes me feel so frantic on the inside and his wailing really made made it worse. I highlight those stuck moments in my mind along with other painful moments like falling off my skateboard. I thought I could go faster if I ran and jumped on it. I went up in the air and landed on the concrete where I felt like I kept landing… it was a strange sensation… and I remember laying there looking up at the sky and plumeria trees (we lived in Hawaii) and boy do I remember having to go to school the next day and sit.

What do you do in ongoing life stucky-ness? Being a 24/7 caregiver for a person with any illness with no end is stuck time that drags on.

We are stuck in my husband’s dementia.

Usually I deal with it better.

Today I am not feeling well.

I feel like I’m coming down with a cold which is making me feel aggravated with his telling and repeating all his weird delusional tales he makes up.

Stuck in dementia… trying to at least emotionally climb out like the painted turtle above.

Day One of #OctPoWriMo 31 Days of October Poetry Challenge – I am writing poetry each day about the subjects of art and caregiving. I am an artist and a caregiver. Now I am dabbling a bit in poetry – especially for the month of October.

The Color of Life

Vibrant wave, first in the bow,

Bulls see it before a row.

Parades in velvet, rubies, garnet,

A dress possessed by a harlet,

The lady in and love is like,

To blush a cheek when pleasure spikes.

Oh so fast, it gets the ticket,

Or swirl and swish, can we just sip it?

Red

~Julie Robinson

I’m so glad you were here to read my first poem. I am participating in a poetry writing group that is writing 31 poems in 31 days in October 2018.

Don’t miss my daily poetry posts as where… for the month of October 2018 I will write art and caregiving poetry in between my other usual posts on art and caregiving.